Sisowath Monivong

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Preah Bat Sisowath Monivong ( Khmer ព្រះបាទ ស៊ី សុ វ តិ ្ថ មុនីវង្ស ; * 1875 in Phnom Penh , † 1941 in Kampot ) was King of Cambodia from 1927 until his death in 1941 .

Life

Sisowath Monivong was the second son of King Sisowath I. At the time of his birth, his uncle Norodom I was King of Cambodia and ruled the country as a puppet of the French Protectorate of Cambodia from the then capital Odong . After France conquered Laos and Vietnam in 1884 , Cambodia was incorporated into the French Indochina colony . The royal family moved from Odong to the new capital Phnom Penh, where Sisowath Monivong was staying.

Norodom died in 1904 and Sisowath Monivong's father became the new king, who made his son crown prince. After the king died in 1927, Sisowath Monivong ascended the throne, but like his predecessors remained a figurehead of France, whose chief representative held the actual power in his hands.

Under Monivong, Cambodia became a target of externally controlled communist influences. In 1930 the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh founded the Indochinese Communist Party , which subsequently also gained a certain popularity in Cambodia. The main objective of the Cambodian branch was to fight the French.

In 1940 France was defeated by the German Reich and Italy in a blitzkrieg and largely occupied. The Vichy government subsequently installed by the Germans took over administration not only in France, but also in the French colonies, including Cambodia. Japan took advantage of the precarious situation in France and began to occupy Indochina from Vietnam. Cambodia was occupied in the spring of 1941. The French colonial administration was allowed to continue to work under Japanese supervision. In the west of Cambodia, Thailand occupied large parts of the country that had been forced from France decades earlier in an act of violence. Sisowath Monivong then retired to Kampot in autumn 1941 and died there that same year.

According to the line of succession, Monivong's son, Sisowath Monireth, would have been heir to the throne, but the French appointed Norodom Sihanouk , a grandson of the late king, as the new king of Cambodia, from whom they probably expected more docile behavior. Sihanouk's father, Norodom Suramarit , king from 1955–1960, had married Monivong's daughter Sisowath Kosamak.

predecessor	Office	successor
Sisowath I.	King of Cambodia 1927 - 1941	Norodom Sihanouk